“One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. …[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency.…”— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com
“Many people desired to be something they are not . . . She was, without knowing it, such an adept in society humbug, that she even humbugged herself. She betrayed herself as she betrayed others, and told little soothing lies to her own conscience as she told them to her friends.”— Marie Corelli, amazon.com
“Modern society contains within itself the seed of its own destruction . . . For God's justice is a circle that slowly surrounds an evil and as slowly closes on it with crushing and resistless force — and feverish, fretting humanity, however nobly inspired, can do nothing either to hasten or retard t…”— Marie Corelli, amazon.com
“The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.”— Friedrich Engels, amazon.com